Friday, June 14, 2013

A testimony of Victory after Defeat!

GOD has put a testimony on my heart and since I never go anywhere my FB friends get it. As you probably know from my daily status vents, rants, whines and prayer requests the past few months have been rough. I was feeling defeated both in my personal life and my business. I felt like a failure as a mother, wife, friend, daughter, business owner and pretty much every role I play. DEFEATED.

"For every step forward the devil knocked me two steps back AND the worse part was I LET HIM!"

It is easy to be defeated when you fight alone or don't fight at all. And the thing is we have Someone in our corner who never loses. We just have to ask Him for help and truly rely on Him.

So, anyway here I am going through life defeated and miserable and just at the end of my rope. Then three things happen.

I am in the car. There is a sermon on the radio. There was a part of that sermon that I knew GOD was speaking directly to me.

To sum it up, it was about a preacher who prepared a sermon. When he gave it he just felt like he failed big time that it didn't go the way he planned. So, the next week he studied and worked harder and he felt good about the next sermon and delivered it perfectly. He couldn't get last weeks sermon out of his mind. Going through the record books to see what had went wrong he noticed that sermon where he felt like he failed, 40 people were saved! That fabulous perfect sermon only 6! Sometimes we may think we fail but God is using us and he never fails! What a privilege that God used him to reach people and do HIS work. Really we can all relate to that, what an honor that God will use us in whatever way He sees fit. I am humbled and honored when He uses me as an instrument in his work.

I couldn't remember if I had even asked God to help me with this defeated feeling. I knew feeling defeated was on my heart and I knew he was speaking to me. He was reminding me I was just an instrument. But I was HIS instrument and that was important. That if He reached one person using me that I couldn't possibly be a failure. You cant truly fail when you do things for the glory of GOD. So, I made sure to pray about feeling defeated, what He knew was on my heart.

2. Then He used me or did He?

One thing I love to do is random acts of kindness/generosity. (RAOK). Many times I've prayed before going out for the day for God to guide me to who needed uplifted for that day. Many times in my own life I've felt alone or upset or just having a bad day and GOD has used someone else to turn my day around.

On this particular day, I had not prayed about acts of kindness. I was worried about my child covered in itchy spots and afraid he wouldn't be able to breathe if his throat started to swell. He was being treated for having an allergic reaction and we had a Dr. appointment this morning.I had just prayed that week for God to use me, but it wasn't on my mind that morning, my sick child was.

On our way to the Dr we got some breakfast. You may laugh at this RAOK but I know it was a RAOK. See, my child doesn't always express/feel emotion in the way kids his age do. When he got excited over a show at Disney World and clapped his hands last year my husband and I both had tears in our eyes. He doesn't always "get" why we donate, give and help people. I've felt like I've failed him when He doesn't want to do these things that mean so much to me.

Again, I feel defeated and a failure as a mom until....

We are having breakfast and there is a stray dog on the lot. He asks if we can give the dog one of his pancakes to be kind to him which made my heart smile and we fed the hungry dog.

After going to the Dr and picking up his medications we went out to eat for lunch. Our waitress was very kind. She asked if my son was sick and I explained what had happened with the allergic reaction . The Waitress started telling me how her oldest child has un-explainable allergic reactions to random things and how severe they are and she can stop breathing. Her daughter has to have an epi-pen. Her baby boy also has seizures all the time and they don't think he will outgrow the epilepsy because it runs in their family.

Here I am a nervous wreck because in his almost 6 years my child has had ONE fibril seizure and ONE allergic reaction. This young lady had 2 beautiful children (yep she showed me their photos) who suffer from both of these things on daily basis but only much much worse. She is also single working mom. She didn't look or act defeated. She acted blessed and happy and joyful to have these two beautiful children. You could tell it broke the waitresses heart for her children to have to go through this, but she was still joyful, sweet and happy. As we paid our bill I tipped her $20. It wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but I also prayed that God would help her babies. That with the little bit of money I could leave, it would help her in some way.

I explained to my son why we had left her the tip we did and why I had prayed for her. In explaining, I reminded him of his own seizure and how scary that was. I explained that her baby boy had to go through them all the time. I asked "wouldn't that be scary." My son "got it" and he had tears in his eyes. My son felt something for another human being and I knew that empathy did exist in him. I explained to him, that in that small act of kindness that we could help God lift her up, that God uses us as his instrument. Then I realized we weren't the instrument SHE was! He used HER to lift me up not the other way around and I was simply saying thank you. And I realized how incredibly blessed I was to have a healthy child and the means to stay at home with him .

3. And sometime he knows I'm hard headed! So he talked to me yet again.

I went to my 31 meeting Saturday for 3 reasons:

I didn't want to let my friend down because I had asked her to go with me!

I knew it would make my friend/director happy

There was a free tote involved

So, I got myself and my family up and drove almost an hour down the road.

The meeting was started with a devotional from Proverbs 31 ministries which I love.

The Devotional was about a mother who felt defeated and felt like a failure. All the same inadequacies I was feeling.

"As the mother got on an airplane the gloomy fog lifted and she could see the sun. The mother then realized feeling inadequate didn't make it true. Just as feeling the sun was gone behind the gloomy clouds doesn't make it true. The sun is still there." She said that there are a lot of people who would trade their best day for my worst day. After hearing about the baby who has deal with health issues on a daily basis, having friends with life threatening illnesses, or having to deal with loved ones. I knew more than ever that was also true for me.

The speaker related this devotional to the ups and downs of direct sales businesses as well. Just to hammer it home that he was indeed speaking to me.

So my friends if you are still with me after that long ramble, I want to praise the LORD and Thank him for speaking to me not once, not twice, but three times this past week. He knew we needed to chat. I don't feel defeated anymore. I feel empowered that I serve an amazing GOD. Who IS listening to me who IS there just above those gloomy clouds. All I need to do is put my faith in him and let him use me. There will still be ups and downs but GOD will see me through them. I may also get defeated now and again but I refuse to stay that way! I will pray while life has me on my knees. Then I will dust myself off and I will let him use me. I will give him the glory! GLORY TO GOD! Thank you for not giving up on me Lord!

"But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)